The Integrated Navigation (INAV™) system is an onboard, interactive navigation system that enables the simultaneous display in aircraft of traffic, terrain, airspace, airways, airports and navigation aids. The Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS) is another onboard navigation system that uses certain aircraft inputs, such as position, air speed and glide slope, along with navigation database information such as terrain, obstacle and airport information, to predict potential conflicts between the aircraft's flight path and terrain or obstacles involved. The Integrated Primary Flight Display (IPFD) is a Synthetic Vision System (SVS) that is another onboard navigation system that provides a Visual Flight Rule (VFR) environment regardless of the time of day or weather conditions. The Runway Awareness and Advisory System (RAAS) is another onboard navigation system that provides improved situational awareness to help lower the probability of runway incursions by providing timely aural advisories to flight crews during taxi, takeoff, final approach, landing and rollout. The navigation information for such systems is maintained in an onboard database and updated on a regular basis. For example, the onboard INAV™ service information database is required to be updated bi-weekly.
A significant problem with the existing onboard navigation information updating techniques is that they are time-consuming manual processes that require the aircraft to be scheduled out-of-service to perform. Consequently, the owners/operators experience down-time, challenges with respect to coordinating aircraft and maintenance personnel schedules, maintenance personnel costs, delayed incorporation of required updates, and decreased revenue as a result. Therefore, a pressing need exists for a navigation information updating technique that can reduce down-time and related costs, increase the timeliness of updates, and resolve the above-described problems and other related problems.